1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a system for providing telecommunication services. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for providing telecommunication subscriber routing services without provisioning or maintenance of subscriber routing information. Still more particularly, the invention relates to an intelligent router that provisions and updates a dialable number-to-home location register address translation file without human intervention.
2. Background Information
The present disclosure generally applies to wireless networks and, more particularly, to cellular telephone systems. One such system is referred to as the Global System for Mobile Communications (“GSM”) which began in Europe and is now available, and growing, in the United States. Although the following discussions is provided in the context of GSM, it should be understood that the disclosure and the claims which follow should not be limited to GSM, unless otherwise specified.
A traditional GSM implementation is show in FIG. 1. A conventional telephone system 10 is shown as PSTN which stands for “Public Switched Telephone Network.” The PSTN refers to the international telephone system. An exemplary telephone 12 is shown attached to, or part of, the PSTN 10. The GSM system shown in FIG. 1 also includes one or more switches 14 and 16. The switches generally communicate with the various subscribers and their cellular telephones, for example cell phone 18. The cell phones are generically referred to as mobile stations (“MS”). It should be understood that the MSs typically do not communicate directly with the switches, but instead communicate with cell towers which relay transmissions between the MSs and the switches. The cell towers have been omitted from FIG. 1 for sake of clarity.
Two numbers are associated with each MS 18. One number is the unique dialable, publicly known number (e.g., 123-456-7890) and is also referred to as the mobile subscriber integrated services digital network (“MSISDN”). The other number is also unique to the MS, but is non-dialable and is generally not known to the public and even the owner of the MS itself. This latter number is referred to as the international mobile subscriber identifier (“IMSI”) number and identifies the MS device to the network. That is, the GSM network generally refers to each MS by its non-dialable IMSI number, and not its dialable MSISDN number.
The network in FIG. 1 also includes a home location register (“HLR”) 20. The HLR is a database that contains semipermanent mobile subscriber information for a wireless carrier's entire subscriber base. The information in the HLR for each subscriber includes the subscriber's IMSI and MSISDN numbers, service subscription information, location information, service restrictions and supplementary services information. The service subscription information specifies the features which the subscriber has in his or her subscription (e.g., call waiting, call forwarding, etc.).
The location information specifies the current location of the subscriber's MS 18. It is desirable for MSs 18 to have one dialable MSISDN number, although more than one is allowed, that can be dialed by anyone regardless of the current location of the MS. The GSM network provides this benefit. A subscriber turns on his or her MS 18 to register the device with the network. Information is passed between the MS 18 and the nearest switch that enables the switch to determine that an MS with a particular IMSI number is in that switch's coverage area. Location information pertaining to that MS is provided to the HLR 20 and the subscriber's HLR information is updated to reflect the current location of the subscriber's MS. Then, when another person dials the subscriber's MSIDN number (e.g., 123-456-7890), the home switch (i.e., the switch corresponding to the MSISDN's area code) contacts the HLR 20 and provides the called MSISDN number to the HLR. The HLR 20 maps the MSISDN number to the subscriber's non-dialable IMSI number and provides the subscriber MS's current location information to the switch at which the call originated. That switch then uses the location information to complete the call between the caller and the subscriber's MS.
As a GSM wireless carrier's subscriber base grows it will eventually become necessary to add additional HLRs to the network. This requirement might be prompted by a service subscription record storage capacity issue, or perhaps a message processing performance issue. Also, it might be prompted by a need to increase the overall network reliability.
The traditional GSM embodiment shown in FIG. 1 works well until more than one HLR is included in the network. With multiple HLRs, additional logic is needed to determine which HLR corresponds to a given subscriber so that the subscriber's current location can be determined. Referring now to FIG. 2, another conventional embodiment of a GSM network is shown in which multiple HLRs are provided. Each HLR has a unique address which the system uses for communication with the HLRs. Each HLR 20 stores the location information discussed above for a plurality of subscribers. To complete a call to an MS 18, it must be determined or known which HLR contains the necessary location information regarding the target subscriber. To that end, the GSM configuration of FIG. 2 also includes a signaling connection control part (“SCCP”) relay 30. The SCCP relay 30 includes MSISDN-to-HLR address translations. The function performed by the SCCP relay is to translate a subscriber's MSIDN number to an HLR address containing the information pertaining to that subscriber so that the subscriber's location information can be retrieved to complete the call as described above.
The SCCP relay 30 is generally a database containing the MSISDN-to-HLR address translations. Currently, this database is maintained and edited manually. That is, human intervention is required to enter new subscribers to the SCCP relay 30 (referred to as “provisioning”), as well as to change existing information (e.g., translations) contained in the relay. This process which requires human beings to continually update the SCCP relay database generally is satisfactory, but does have its disadvantages such as data entry errors that may occur due to human intervention, as well as the daily maintenance costs associated with the human intervention. Failure to maintain the accuracy of such information can translate into lost revenue due to the failure to locate and connect calls to subscribers that are not current between the HLRs and the SCCP relays. Accordingly, an improved mechanism is needed to address these concerns.